Pep knows we’ve got his back, the only people unduly criticising and taking the piss out of him
For his passion are keyboard warriors, tourists
& WUMS.. He’s the best there has ever been, changed football forever for the better and won us a shed load of trophies ….
Criticizing Pep is not evidence of not having his back. Nobody wants him gone. And he is eternally loved.
But we recognize his genius and need him to tap in and fix things.In my opinion, some of the problem is a talent issue. But lots of it isn't. And Pep ought to attempt to fix it.
Ability to break a press: Has degraded significantly. We don't have passing patterns designed to do this anymore. We have players getting the ball then guessing where to play it. This is mostly a structure and pattern issue. Pep should fix it.
Ability to make team's pay for pressing: Teams used to press us less a few years ago ( even after our ability to break presses had begun to erode) because once we successfully broke an aggressive pressure our "press break counter attacks," were deadly. So the risk of pressing is far outweighed the potential rewards. Nowadays even after we break a press we mostly just resort to a turgid middle of the field slow pass around that sometimes resulted in returning it back to defenders to get put under a press again.
So the risk of pressing is is now non-existent as we don't carry a scary counter attack anymore. Slow midfielders with excessive touches plus defensive players with risk adverse touches causes this. This too is part talent and part structure. Pep can fix the structure part.
Our Press: the part of our game that has regressed the most. Our press when the other team plays out of the back. This is the most painful part of our regression.
1) more teams pass out of the back now, even bottom table teams. Their Managers are all Pep-ites. So they demand it even from poor ball playing defenders. Yet our press is now so weak and so disorganized that we often fail to muster the most basic of pressure against most teams.
Liverpool over the weekend made 3 errors passing out of the back but we were so disjointed and half asses in our press that no one was even close to the ball to capitalize on the missed passes.
Lots of the problem here is Haaland. Who has an aversion to team pressing concepts. And always half-ass his press. Always starts late, and never finishes the press loop aggressively. Then Phil sees him and just doesn't bother to pickup the 2nd man and for some reason our CMs simply sit at the hallway line with the CBs a d never step into the space and close the free man or our Fullback close the man on the line.
This press failure problem, is all Pep ( or whoever his assistant is that used to teach this) and if that's one of the guys who has left, he needs to hire another guy to do it. This flaccid press is the biggest decline in our play from years ago. It is worse than non-existent.
And this is all down to Pep. Philosophically, you are supposed to cut the field in half, force the first plant on the ball ( often the goalie and sometimes a defender) to only have options to one direction of the field, then as soon as he passes to that area, flood the area with multiple players defending each option on that side of the field, plus one extra. Then the original press player (often Haaland) must make sure the ball cannot be passed back to the original passer ( often the goalkeeper) as an outlet to restart..
We used to do this instinctively and often. Now everyone acts like it's a foreign concept and each player just half ass presses their guy and then stops when he passes it before they get to him. And the next guy waits till his guy has received the ball before approaching. This is all tactically wrong. And I can't believe it's happening under a Pep managed team.
Pep MUST fix this or we won't compete. No matter who we get in the Winter or next summer.
